From the closures of exchanges, from problems at major platforms, from a string of hacks. Then it sounded radical. And now we’re looking at it live, in real time.

Bitget has officially confirmed the hack. The amount of funds affected is about $351.6 million; transfers were made from part of the hot wallets. Cold wallets, according to the exchange, were not affected. Withdrawals are temporarily paused, while deposits and trading are operating. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said that private keys were not compromised—the attackers gained access to internal infrastructure and initiated transfers that the system interpreted as legitimate. The exchange says the damage will be covered by the protection fund, whose size is more than $464 million, so for them it’s likely not a critical amount. But the fact itself is telling: if an attack is happening not through cryptography but through internal processes, then a centralized exchange is vulnerable by definition. Fully protecting against something like this is practically impossible.

But the main thing now isn’t even Bitget. The main thing is the wave of closures that’s going across the market. And here the picture is much more worrying.

Look at 2026. Bit.com closed on December 27, 2025, with the migration of assets to Matrixport. BYEX stopped in December 2025. AscendEX halted trading on July 1, 2026 due to MiCA licensing problems in the EU and the loss of a liquidity partner. BitMEX stopped on September 23, 2026 after 11 years of operation. CoinEx announced its closure in September 2026, with a final shutdown on December 22. And separately—BitMart, where the situation already looks very bad: the team stopped responding, withdrawals are closed. The coin we traded on the platform is also now all frozen. This is no longer a coincidence. This is a systemic process.

And the reason for this process is one and the same: most exchanges today have huge cash shortfalls. There’s no liquidity, no volume—people aren’t trading. Those who buy bitcoin or other coins take them into cold wallets and don’t keep them on the platforms. Exchanges physically can’t cover their obligations. And against this backdrop, “a hack” becomes a convenient explanation—one incident, and you can blame it for everything: a shortage, a gap, missed payouts. Officially it will look like a hacker attack, but in reality it’s a way to close what already wasn’t converging anyway. I’m not saying that was the case with Bitget, but overall, across the market, this scenario is now more than likely.

And now the main thing. This whole exchange crisis is simultaneously a bitcoin shortage in the market. Coins are moving from centralized platforms to cold wallets; supply on exchanges is falling; trust in centralized structures is collapsing. And this—just as I said a year ago—can push the price upward. Not because everything is fine, but because everything is bad—and people are running toward self-preservation.

So my direct advice is: if you have assets on centralized exchanges, withdraw them now. To cold wallets. Don’t keep funds on the platforms—right now it’s extremely unsafe. Be careful, follow the news, and don’t hold your funds on centralized exchanges.